Bios

Nicholas Firth (Narrator and baritone) had a career as music publisher for over 40 years, publishing a wide range of music including many of the composers and lyricists of the Great American Songbook. An avid singer in school and college, he “retired” around the age of 21. He was called out of retirement by John Hargraves to join Six of Clubs. This is the eleventh show Nick has written for the group.  President of the Jean and Louis Dreyfus foundation, he is a Board member of the Maness School of Music and the College of Performing Arts of the New School and Beth Morrison Productions.

 

John Hargraves (Musical Director/Pianist) is a writer and translator and former professor of German literature at Yale and Connecticut College. John has written a book and multiple articles on the relationship of music to German literature. He is a translator of a major work on J. S. Bach and several other books and spent two months last years in Berlin at a writer’s residency. As a performer, he has given several recitals in Connecticut with singers and instrumentalists and also produced and played a review of the songs of Ivor Novello in New York. John is co-founder and performer/ president of Musical Masterworks in Old Lyme, a chamber music series there, and also serves as a board member of the Vienna Philharmonic Society of New York and the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

 

Soprano Beatrice Broadwater has enjoyed four decades of performing classical art songs, sacred music, oratorio, vocal chamber music, operetta, and the American Songbook. She has had several solo recitals in New York at Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, St. Peter’s Church at Citicorp and has performed in Paris, Hamburg and Wick, Scotland. She sang for many years at the Church of St. Thomas More in New York City and was frequently featured in its MOREMusic Series.  She is a graduate of Mannes, which is now a division of the College of Performing Arts at the New School and has served on their Board since 1985.

Win Rutherfurd (Baritone) started his singing career as a boy soprano at the Buckley School in New York City, soon gravitating to baritone roles. At Princeton, he headed the Tigertones singing group. For the past 40 years, he has sung all the major baritone roles in the Blue Hill troupe. A trusts and estates attorney, he has carried his love of opera into the administrative world as Chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and as an Advisory Director of the Metropolitan Opera. He serves on the Boards of the Fresh Air Fund, the Buckley School and numerous private foundations.

Tenor Rich Miller a founding member of the group, has made a specialty of operetta with professional and amateur companies, international festivals, and college organizations, and appeared recently at Carnegie Hall in a featured role in a Gershwin musical-operetta.  He has sung all the leading tenor roles of Gilbert and Sullivan for the Blue Hill Troupe and elsewhere.   A leading trusts and estate lawyer, Rich is a graduate of Williams College, Albany Law School of Union University, and the New York University School of Law. He is President of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

Angela Cason (mezzo soprano) began singing in earnest through the Yale     a capella groups New Blue, and Whim ‘n Rhythm. In her twenties, she performed numerous cabarets around the city. She joined the Blue Hill Troupe, playing such roles as Pitti-sing and Lady Blanche, which led to the Six of Clubs. Founder of a digital advertising agency, TEMPO Strategic, she is also a trustee of the National Institute of Social Sciences and president of Causeries du Lundi, the oldest women’s writing group in the country. This is a very old picture and she isn’t about to change it.

Jeffrey Klitz, is a Yale-educated music director, arranger, and orchestrator for Broadway and beyond, winning the Joseph Jefferson Award for his work on The House of Martin Guerre. He has written and produced for the New York Philharmonic, The Chicago Symphony, Disney, and Paul McCartney’s publishing house, MPL.  He has taught at Yale College, The National Theater Institute, and the Cabaret Conference at Yale, and has music directed for and/or accompanied Judy Collins, Joel Grey, Betty Buckley, Tommy Tune, Andrea Marcovicci, Bernadette Peters, and Patti Lupone. The New York Times noted his “jagged downtown sensibility,” and Jeff’s brilliant arrangements give our shows great beauty and (dare we say) a modicum of cool.